In an effort to catch up on all that's gone on in the last few weeks, I've made a list:

1) Halloween, costumes, and the totally ludicrous amount of candy collected by my children
2) The no-Gillyweed experiment
3) Dyeing with Devil, parts A and B
4) Manon, and my poor Mommy brain that cannot read patterns, or comprehend them even when they are read.
5) What am I, an Aggie?

I can take care of a couple of those items in this post. Starting at the bottom...

I was posting last week from College Station because I was invited up there for a work-type deal. I got to spend two and a half days in a hotel room without anyone yelling for Mommy (except when I talked to Devil on the phone on Tuesday night), and I got a bunch of knitting done (Manon, TBD).

Back up to #2: I did actually complete a 5K swim last weekend. It was a near thing however. Let me set the scene...

Week before race: Ironman was in the UK, and I came down with a horrific lurgy of some sort, which meant I did not set flipper to water until the day before the race. Tapering is one thing, but this scenario was not ideal. And then there was the entry problem.

I sent in my race entry and check in the beginning of October. And then heard absolutely nothing. I figured that, since they asked for my email address, I might get an acknowledgement of my entry, or some pre-race info or something. But nothing. On the Tuesday before the race, I finally got around to checking my bank account and realized that my check hadn't been cashed. I hunted down the race director's email and sent him a message.

And then I heard nothing.

By Friday, I was getting a bit concerned, so I hunted down the race director's phone number and called him. The very nice lady on the other end said "Oh, you mean you didn't get his email? I know he wrote back to you." Suffice to say that no, they didn't get my entry and, for once, Yahoo's spam filters had actually worked, only the message they worked on was not spam. Harrumph.

You will not be surprised to know that the idea of getting up at 4:30 am on Saturday to drive 3 hrs to Austin was not popular at that moment with yours truly. But somehow it happened. Actually, it mostly happened because Ironman, who arrived back from the UK that day, said "Well, I'll be awake then anyway because of the time change, so I'll drive." What a trooper.

Off we went to Lake Travis, which was a balmy (!!!) 73 degrees for this endeavor. And it went quite well - I wasn't last (my biggest fear), I didn't drown, and the distance went by a lot faster in the open water then it did in the pool. But it is not fun to wear a pair of swim goggles for 1.5 hours without a break - talk about a headache!

The best part of the weekend was taking the girls to Lake Somerville to camp out that night. They enjoyed playing in the tent (although I had to lay down the law about bringing handfuls of dirt in there as "food") and eating hot dogs and marshmallows for dinner. And only three parties of duck hunters came by and launched their boats off the boat ramp next to our camping site. At approximately 3:00, 4:00 and 5:00 am. Niiiiiice...but we saw lots of birds, and deer, and a live armadillo (usually only seen as smudges on the pavement around here). It was a very nice weekend.

And no, I haven't been back in the pool yet!

OK, that takes care of two items...

1) Halloween, costumes, and the totally ludicrous amount of candy collected by my children
2) ~~The no-Gillyweed experiment~~
3) Dyeing with Devil, parts A and B
4) Manon, and my poor Mommy brain that cannot read patterns, or comprehend them even when they are read.
5) ~~What am I, an Aggie?~~

Porpoise Fur